Posted under Work Stuff on Monday, December 9, 2013 @ 5:38:05 PM
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Office 365 is the future, at least if you listen to Microsoft. We use it at work because it allows us to shift our MS Office spend from CapEx to OpEx and scale up and down, which is nice.

The way Office is licensed is there's a software app that gets installed on all of your computers, and each user signs in with their online services ID, which is tied to a subscription. Theoretically that's OK, but about once a month the entire subscription system breaks and we can't activate MS Office for any new employees and we get a pile up of systems needing to be activated until Microsoft fixes the problem.

Compounding that is the issue of Microsoft's stance on the importance of support, which is incredibly low. The only way to get support is to open a ticket online or call an 800 # and speak to someone in a call center in India. If you open a ticket online, it takes 2-3 hours to get a call back. If you call the 800 # it usually takes longer to get to someone in the right department.

The online support doesn't have any concept of working via e-mail, which is unfortunate. Even if I submit a ticket where the first and last sentences of the description are "DO NOT CALL ME - SEND CORRESPONDENCE TO FRED@LPGA.COM", they still call me. I'm often working on 5 things at once, so it's not conducive to be tied to a telephone when I can much more easily work from a set of instructions provided by e-mail and then return any requested info.

There's no escalation path that gets you out of India, there's no concept of an account manager (for something we pay close to $36k/year for), and their support line in India must use some really shoddy VoIP service because when you talk to them, for every minute you're on the phone with them the audio will not work at all for probably 15-20 seconds.

Today, after waiting 3 hours for a response to an issue I submitted online, I called the 800 #. The following is paraphrasing the 32 minute conversation I had with the person that picked up the phone before she finally transferred me to (presumably) where I need to be and I went back on hold:

Microsoft: Can you please give me the user ID you use to login to the Office 365 portal?

Me: fredw@lpga.com

Microsoft: I'm sorry, I don't see the user ID you gave me in my system and I don't see your name listed so I cannot talk to you.

Me: I'm logged into the portal with the user ID I gave you and that brought me to the admin center, so it seems like the user ID I gave you is correct.

Microsoft: Since I do not see your name listed, you would need to check with your company administrator in order to be added to the account.

Me: I'm the administrator.

Microsoft: I'm sorry but your name isn't showing up my system.

Me: How do we fix that?

Microsoft: You would need to contact your company administrator.

Me: If I just stop sending you checks at the end of the month, will that get me in touch with someone that can actually help me?